Latest news with #LGBTQ-specific
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump Celebrates Pride by Defunding LGBTQ+ Support at Suicide Hotline
President Donald Trump is marking Pride Month by slashing specialized counseling services for young LGBTQ+ people who call the National Suicide Hotline. The Department of Health and Human Services' proposed 2026 budget cuts LGBTQ+ youth resources provided by the hotline, also known as 988. Although $520 million is still set aside to fund the organization, government support for LGBTQ-specific counseling will be eliminated. When Trump signed the suicide prevention line into law in 2020, the legislation put in place special counseling for high-risk populations like LGBTQ+ people under the age of 25. The hotline service was required to employ 'specially trained staff and partner organizations' because—the legislation states—queer and trans youth 'are more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide.' Less than five years later, a senior administration official told NBC that the money has been reallocated so that it doesn't go to 'radical grooming contractors,' perpetuating a discriminatory stereotype that equates LGBTQ+ individuals or allies with sexual abusers. Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House's Office of Management and Budget, said that the proposed budget funds 988 but not 'radical gender ideology.' 'It does not... grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents,' Cauley said. The contractors that partner with 988 are mental health organizations that typically provide care to the general population and LGBTQ+ people. This includes The Trevor Project, which has long advocated for LGBTQ+ youth. Jaymes Black, The Trevor Project's CEO, said in a statement to NBC: 'Attempts to discredit these life-saving services will not change the reality of what this administration is proposing: the elimination of a national suicide prevention program, run by seven leading crisis contact centers, that has supported over 1.3 million LGBTQ+ youth across the U.S. with best-practice crisis care.' Black, who urged Congress to rethink the proposal, said that 'every young life is worth saving.' The Trump administration chose to announce the move during Pride Month, a season meant to honor queer representation and commemorate the pioneers who paved the way toward equality. The first Pride marches were held in 1970 to honor the one-year anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a pivotal event in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. It took nearly 30 years for the U.S. government to officially recognize the significance of the month; in 1999 former president Bill Clinton issued a proclamation recognizing June as 'Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.' Its name was subsequently updated to include other identities, like bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals, by former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. It formally became LGBTQ+ Pride Month in 2021. Trump had already signalled that he would officially spite Pride Month last week when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has no intention to formally recognize it. 'There are no plans for a proclamation for the month of June,' Leavitt said. 'But I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or creed.' Trump's critique of 'gender ideology' has been a cornerstone of his second term. He has declared that there are only two biological sexes; scrubbed agency websites of any mention of transgender or intersex people; stripped diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs from the federal government; barred transgender women from women's sports; prevented federal funding from going to transition-related care for minors; and removed transgender people from the military.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
White House proposes axing 988 suicide hotline services for LGBTQ youth
The Department of Health and Human Services' proposed budget for 2026 eliminates specialized suicide hotline services for LGBTQ youth and young adults. The budget proposal, which the department published Friday, designates $520 million for 988, the suicide prevention line, and behavioral health crisis services, which is the same amount the Biden administration provided for 988. However, the 2026 budget proposal would end government funding for LGBTQ-specific counseling to 988 callers upon request. When asked for comment, a spokesperson for HHS directed NBC News to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for OMB, noted that the proposed budget would provide the same amount for 988 services as was provided in previous years. 'It does not, however, grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents,' Cauley said. 'Radical gender ideology' is a political term adopted by conservatives and President Donald Trump's administration to describe the existence of transgender people and the trans rights movement, which it considers harmful to children. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline has existed since 2005, and, in 2020, during his first term, Trump signed legislation designating 988 as the new lifeline number by 2022. That legislation required 988 to provide LGBTQ youth and young adults who call the line with access to 'specially trained staff and partner organizations,' noting that queer and trans youth 'are more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide.' A senior administration official said the money for services for LGBTQ young people has not been cut, but rather reallocated to the general 988 services so that it doesn't go to 'radical grooming contractors,' using another term adopted by conservatives decades ago to falsely equate being LGBTQ or promoting LGBTQ inclusivity with sexually abusing children. The contractors who provide LGBTQ-specific services through 988 are mental health organizations based across the U.S. Most of them provide mental health care to the general population in addition to LGBTQ people. The official said only the contract with 'radical gender' counselors is being terminated, and not the resources. However, under the proposed budget, when LGBTQ youth and young adults under age 25 call 988, there will not be an option for them to be connected to a counselor who is trained to provide support to LGBTQ youth. Currently, LGBTQ young people can also text 'PRIDE' to 988 to reach a counselor with such training. The official did not respond to additional questions regarding what organization(s) 'radical grooming contractors' was referring to specifically. The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youths, is among the contractors that make up a subnetwork of specialists who provide 988 services to LGBTQ young people. 'Attempts to discredit these life-saving services will not change the reality of what this administration is proposing: the elimination of a national suicide prevention program, run by seven leading crisis contact centers, that has supported over 1.3 million LGBTQ+ youth across the U.S. with best-practice crisis care,' Jaymes Black, the project's CEO, said in a statement to NBC News, referring to the number of contacts who have reached out to 988 for LGBTQ-specific support since the program's start in 2022. 'Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — and our President — came together during the first Trump administration to create this specialized resource,' Black added. 'It's a shared acknowledgement that every young life is worth saving, and that risk, not identity, drives evidence-based and effective crisis intervention. We strongly urge the administration and Congress to rethink this proposal, and do what is best for ending the public health crisis of suicide among our nation's youth." The other six contractors who provide 988 services to LGBTQ young people are Centerstone, Volunteers of America Western Washington State, Solari Crisis & Human Services, CommUnity Crisis Services, HopeLink Behavioral Health and La Frontera EMPACT. Centerstone did not answer NBC News' question about the proposed elimination to 988's LGBTQ-specific service, and the other organizations did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In April, The Washington Post reported a leaked HHS budget draft that proposed cutting funding for 988 services for LGBTQ youth. At the time, the White House wouldn't confirm the veracity of that draft or the information about the funding. The budget proposal is the latest effort from the Trump administration to rollback services and protections for LGBTQ people, specifically transgender people. In the first few weeks of his second administration, Trump issued several executive orders targeting trans people, including declaring that there are only two unchangeable sexes; prohibiting trans people from enlisting and serving in the military; barring trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams in federally-funded K-12 schools and colleges; and barring federal funding from going to hospitals that provide transition-related care to minors. Federal officials have also scrubbed agency websites of any mention of transgender or intersex people, including from the website for the Stonewall National Monument commemorating the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, in which historians say trans people were crucial and became a turning point in the modern gay rights movement. At the start of June, which is LGBTQ Pride month, the Navy confirmed to NBC News that it would rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named for the LGBTQ rights activist, Navy veteran and first openly gay man elected to public office in California. This article was originally published on
NBC News
4 days ago
- Health
- NBC News
White House proposes axing 988 suicide hotline services for LGBTQ youth
The Department of Health and Human Services' proposed budget for 2026 eliminates specialized suicide hotline services for LGBTQ youth and young adults. The budget proposal, which the department published Friday, designates $520 million for 988, the suicide prevention line, and behavioral health crisis services, which is the same amount the Biden administration provided for 988. However, the 2026 budget proposal would end government funding for LGBTQ-specific counseling to 988 callers upon request. When asked for comment, a spokesperson for HHS directed NBC News to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for OMB, noted that the proposed budget would provide the same amount for 988 services as was provided in previous years. 'It does not, however, grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents,' Cauley said. 'Radical gender ideology' is a political term adopted by conservatives and President Donald Trump's administration to describe the existence of transgender people and the trans rights movement, which it considers harmful to children. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline has existed since 2005, and, in 2020, during his first term, Trump signed legislation designating 988 as the new lifeline number by 2022. That legislation required 988 to provide LGBTQ youth and young adults who call the line with access to 'specially trained staff and partner organizations,' noting that queer and trans youth 'are more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide.' A senior administration official said the money for services for LGBTQ young people has not been cut, but rather reallocated to the general 988 services so that it doesn't go to 'radical grooming contractors,' using another term adopted by conservatives decades ago to falsely equate being LGBTQ or promoting LGBTQ inclusivity with sexually abusing children. The contractors who provide LGBTQ-specific services through 988 are mental health organizations based across the U.S. Most of them provide mental health care to the general population in addition to LGBTQ people. The official said only the contract with 'radical gender' counselors is being terminated, and not the resources. However, under the proposed budget, when LGBTQ youth and young adults under age 25 call 988, there will not be an option for them to be connected to a counselor who is trained to provide support to LGBTQ youth. Currently, LGBTQ young people can also text 'PRIDE' to 988 to reach a counselor with such training. The official did not respond to additional questions regarding what organization(s) 'radical grooming contractors' was referring to specifically. The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youths, is among the contractors that make up a subnetwork of specialists who provide 988 services to LGBTQ young people. 'Attempts to discredit these life-saving services will not change the reality of what this administration is proposing: the elimination of a national suicide prevention program, run by seven leading crisis contact centers, that has supported over 1.3 million LGBTQ+ youth across the U.S. with best-practice crisis care,' Jaymes Black, the project's CEO, said in a statement to NBC News, referring to the number of contacts who have reached out to 988 for LGBTQ-specific support since the program's start in 2022. 'Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — and our President — came together during the first Trump administration to create this specialized resource,' Black added. 'It's a shared acknowledgement that every young life is worth saving, and that risk, not identity, drives evidence-based and effective crisis intervention. We strongly urge the administration and Congress to rethink this proposal, and do what is best for ending the public health crisis of suicide among our nation's youth. The other six contractors who provide 988 services to LGBTQ young people are Centerstone, Volunteers of America Western Washington State, Solari Crisis & Human Services, CommUnity Crisis Services, HopeLink Behavioral Health and La Frontera EMPACT. Centerstone did not answer NBC News' question about the proposed elimination to 988's LGBTQ-specific service, and the other organizations did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In April, The Washington Post reported a leaked HHS budget draft that proposed cutting funding for 988 services for LGBTQ youth. At the time, the White House wouldn't confirm the veracity of that draft or the information about the funding. The budget proposal is the latest effort from the Trump administration to rollback services and protections for LGBTQ people, specifically transgender people. In the first few weeks of his second administration, Trump issued several executive orders targeting trans people, including declaring that there are only two unchangeable sexes; prohibiting trans people from enlisting and serving in the military; barring trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams in federally-funded K-12 schools and colleges; and barring federal funding from going to hospitals that provide transition-related care to minors. Federal officials have also scrubbed agency websites of any mention of transgender or intersex people, including from the website for the Stonewall National Monument commemorating the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, in which historians say trans people were crucial and became a turning point in the modern gay rights movement. At the start of June, which is LGBTQ Pride month, the Navy confirmed to NBC News that it would rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named for the LGBTQ rights activist, Navy veteran and first openly gay man elected to public office in California.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Meta's Platforms Have Become a Cesspool of Hatred Against Queer People
In front of hundreds of Georgetown students back in 2019, a clean-cut Mark Zuckerberg delivered an impassioned sermon on the importance of empowerment and free speech. The Meta CEO called civil rights advocate Elijah Cummings a "powerful voice for equality," credited Facebook as ground zero for #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, and even cited radical abolitionist Frederick Douglass. "More people being able to share their perspectives has always been necessary to build a more inclusive society," Zuckerberg said at the time. "But this view is increasingly being challenged." Just a few short years, one right-wing turn and a bizarre makeover later, it's become clear that Zuckerberg had a very specific brand of free speech absolutism in mind. A recent report by the prominent LGBTQ advocacy organization Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) found definitive evidence that six major social media platforms consistently refuse to develop and enforce policies protecting LGBTQ users, while simultaneously subjecting them to disproportionate moderation. While this issue is found across the biggest social media sites, GLAAD notes that major shifts in Meta's ideological stance under the New Zuckerberg were "particularly extreme." Assembled every year since 2021, the GLAAD report assigns each major social media site a "Platform Scorecard," which grades platforms on a 1-to-100 scale based on 14 LGBTQ-specific standards ranging from policies preventing targeted misgendering to LGBTQ-safety content moderator training to data gathering based on sexual orientation. Meta's Threads scored a paltry 40 on the platform scorecard, while both Facebook and Instagram managed 45. One major concern was Meta's recent revision to its Hateful Conduct policy, which affects all three platforms. Under Meta's new terms, content "encouraging hate, harassment, and discrimination against LGBTQ people" is completely acceptable. For example, Meta's new guidelines allow "allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism [sic] and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'" That goes hand in hand with the tech giant's vague Bullying and Harassment policy. Though Meta users are theoretically protected from "claims about romantic involvement, sexual orientation, or gender identity," the company doesn't bother to clarify whether targeted misgendering is included under those rules. That's a strange omission, considering the way Meta stresses that it's cool with calling LGBTQ people "mentally ill." Thanks to the new policy, ominous groups are thriving on Meta platforms. Shining examples include "Transvestigation Disclosure NOW," a public Facebook group pedaling anti-trans conspiracy theories with over 32,000 members, and "Alliance Defending Freedom," a right-wing anti-LGBTQ Instagram page boasting 74,000 followers. Yet as hate speech grows under Zuckerberg's watch, GLAAD Social Media Safety Director Jenni Olson notes that Meta's policy erosion has been years in the making. One particularly effective yardstick for measuring this is the rise of LibsOfTikTok, a far-right anti-LGBTQ conspiracy account which been linked to a growing portfolio of offline extremism, including 21 bomb threats. "The account is extremely active on Meta platforms, which I think people forget," Olson observed. "For years, the account was not active on Meta platforms, because it could not have gotten away with the things it posts. Obviously since January there's been this significant shift, but Meta has been shifting even prior to that, particularly last year, allowing more and more extreme hate, including LibsOfTikTok." As this content proliferates on Meta, LGBTQ users are being suppressed. In the past few months, Meta has blocked users under 18 from using LGBTQ hashtags, removed transgender users' posts under "sexual solicitation" guidelines, and suspended the organizer of the San Francisco Trans March citing "human exploitation" violations. "Because LGBTQ people end up being defined by our sexual orientation and gender identify in relation to sex, there's this scrutiny of content that doesn't have anything to do with sex," says Olson. "We just happen to be gay... You don't scrutinize somebody's content as 'sexual' just because they're straight." While Zuckerberg's Meta is particularly odious, it's far from the only company ignoring its stated goal of protecting LGBTQ users from harm. Other platforms highlighted by GLAAD include YouTube, which scored 41 on its scorecard after scrubbing "gender identity" from its hate speech policy, and X-formerly-Twitter, which has transformed into a cesspit of reactionary hate since being purchased by Elon Musk. X scored just 30 out of 100 — which is probably no surprise to the 32 million users who've fled the app since its rebranding. These scores translate to real offline harms. According to The Trevor Project, 39 percent of LGBTQ youth faced a suicidal crisis in 2024. Among those aged 13 to 17, 35 percent reported experiencing cyberbullying in the past year — a factor that tripled their risk of attempting suicide. In response to the sharp influx of anti-LGBTQ policy, GLAAD is calling on social media giants to reverse their regressive policy agendas and take a hard look at the report's safety recommendations. "All the platforms should enforce or restore their policies that protect LGBTQ people and others from hate and harassment," Olson says. "Improving training for content moderators... using AI systems to flag content for human review," and "working with civil society groups like GLAAD" would go a long way toward mitigating these harms, she notes. With clear evidence of harm and strong policy solutions, the path forward is clear — but how do we get the world's biggest tech companies to act? "As you can see from the index, no one is doing a good job. And what is the cudgel to beat back on it?" asks Sarah Roberts, UCLA professor and Director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. "It's not like they're unaware." In years past, it was the gloss of progressive values and democratic expression keeping platforms in check. As evidenced by Zuckerberg's new chic, that's out the window. "We've always had 'the stick' of bad PR," Roberts said, "but we're in a very different and unique moment where some of those levers have less power than they did even six months ago." Key to any change in the global social media industry, then, is "dispensing with the notion that social media firms are in the business of promulgation of social values," notes Roberts. In other words, we need to take a hard look at social media for what it is — not as a neutral service to humanity, but a conglomerate of some of the most powerful corporations on the planet. More on Meta: Zuckerberg Says in Response to Loneliness Epidemic, He Will Create Most of Your Friends Using Artificial Intelligence
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Gavin Newsom rips Trump, RFK. Jr. over suicide hotline cuts
SACRAMENTO, California — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that he's supporting a proposed law to print the number for a LGBTQ crisis line on the back of every public middle and high school ID card, as Donald Trump's administration cuts back on the program nationally. It's another move, reported here for the first time, from Newsom that puts him in direct opposition with Washington, just one week after California became the first state to sue Trump over tariffs and then moved on another suit challengeing the administration over the Department of Government Efficiency's cuts to AmeriCorps. The Democratic governor's support is a direct reaction to recent reports that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to cut funding from the nonprofit network that to provides LGBTQ-specific counseling for youth at the national 988 suicide hotline. 'Suicide is the second leading cause of death among LGBTQ youth. Cutting off kids' access to help is indefensible,' Newsom said in a statement shared exclusively with Politico. 'While the Trump administration walks away from its responsibility, California will continue to expand access to life-saving resources, because the life of every child — straight, gay, trans — is worth fighting for.' The California bill, AB 727 from a first-term Los Angeles Assemblymember Mark González, would put the number for the Trevor Project — the crisis and suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth — on student ID cards. The Trevor Project is one of the nonprofits that would lose funding under Trump's budget, and the bill has come under fire from social conservatives in the state like the California Family Council who say it 'undermines families' and provides a 'playground for predators.' At the bill's first hearing in early April, Republican Assemblymember Josh Hoover questioned why it was necessary to put an LGBTQ-specific hotline number on cards, when a 2018 law put the general 988 hotline on all IDs already. 'My concern has nothing to do with the ability to call a hotline, obviously, that is something that I support,' Hoover said. 'But if you go right now to the Trevor Project website, there are a number of resources provided that are very political in nature. There is access to a number of things that I would argue a lot of parents would be uncomfortable with.'
